Planned Parenthood Doctor: “I Really Liked Babies, Believe It or Not.”

It’s so easy to condemn the abortionists and executives at Planned Parenthood and other abortion clinics, but as Catholic Christians can we see them as people like us; fellow human beings who are made in the image and likeness of God, but are fallen? People who have made and continue to make bad choices along with the good? Granted, some of their choices are on a vastly larger scale, concerning life and death, but can we see how they fell into this?

I have been transfixed on a quote by Senior Medical Director of Planned Parenthood Dr. Deborah Nucatola. “But I really liked babies, believe it or not”, she told undercover reporters in the first video by The Center for Medical Progress in commenting about the history of her medical career. (It’s on the full length video, transcript page 50).

“I’m Going to Crush Below, I’m Going to Crush Above”

If you have seen the videos, she is the woman who is casually eating a salad and drinking wine, as she glibly describes an abortion and the harvesting of baby organs;

“So then you’re just kind of cognizant of where you put your graspers, you try to intentionally go above and below the thorax, so that, you know, we’ve been very good at getting heart, lung, liver, because we know that, so I’m not gonna crush that part, I’m going to basically crush below, I’m gonna crush above, and I’m gonna see if I can get it all intact.”

Dr. Nucatola never aspired to her current job: “I didn’t ever have a plan…job opportunities just presented themselves every so often.” When she was younger, she was an athlete who had a lot of sports injuries and surgeries so she was interested in becoming an orthopedic surgeon. But her cohorts “were all these big burly types” which she didn’t like. She thought of being a physical therapist “but that required a master’s degree and I said, if I’m going to graduate school, I might as well become a doctor.”

From Pediatrician to Abortionist

“But I really liked babies, believe it or not,” and was thinking of being a pediatrician “but the kids you do treat were all sick and it was very depressing.” [It wasn’t “depressing” to dismember and kill unborn kids in the womb?…Whew!] She then decided to be an OB/GYN until her very last day of residency. She was treating “a woman who was bleeding from a D&E, dilate and extraction, late second trimester abortion. She looked up at me, and she said, ‘Don’t let me die.’ And she actually bled to death. We did a hysterectomy in about twelve minutes and she died. It was very distressing and very upsetting. I probably had a very different reaction than most people would, which was, well, I do D&Es all the time, and I don’t ever have complications. And I think I’m pretty good at them, I need to keep making sure that there are lots of people doing these D&Es safely so there’s not another patient like this. That was the day I said I’m not doing perinatology, which is high-risk OB, I’m going to do family planning, and I’m going to train others to do family planning.” Her program director advise her to become a program director of Planned Parenthood. “I said, really? I didn’t even know what Planned Parenthood was. I think I went to a Planned Parenthood once when I was in college” (page 51).

A Few Questions for the Abortionist

Now this is how she sees it, but I have a few questions for her:

• As a resident doing D&Es did you ever think of the bizarreness of also treating premature babies, nearly the same age as those you were aborting, and newborns?
• Did you “like” the babies you were dismembering?
• Do you still “like babies”?
• Did it ever cross your mind that abortion might be wrong, not a good medical practice?
• You also said, “…believe it or not”? Are you aware of the weird career change from pediatrician to abortionist?

Maybe in her mind it all made logical sense? Abortion is legal. It’s been legal for her whole life so there’s never a reason to question it. It’s all about choice, right? But there are good choices and bad choices.

“Not All Moral Issues Have the Same Moral Weight as Abortion”

Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI said, “Not all moral issues have the same moral weight as abortion and euthanasia.” Human life certainly has a higher value than someone’s desire to pursue a career, or to not be inconvenienced, or to continue with the party scene.

Thomas Aquinas said that if you make even a small mistake in your original premise, you can proceed with perfect logic to a wrong conclusion.

We’ve all done this. We’ve all made mistakes. I have made legions of them. As a young man two of my girlfriends had abortions. My own false belief that sex outside of marriage and abortion were perfectly fine led to this mistake. Only in later life have I come to a completely different way of thinking and realization that the Catholic Church had been right all along. I hope and pray that she leaves that industry, maybe even becoming a baby doctor.

Seeing Others with the Eyes of Christ

Let’s try to look at her and all of the abortion workers with the eyes of Jesus. “Not that I’m all together, let me help others who aren’t,” newly ordained Fr. John Gribowich recently told our Study Group on Bishop Robert Barron’s Untold Blessings: Three Paths to Holiness (study guide by Mark Shea). “To recognize that you are completely broken and powerless,” Fr. John continues, “and radically in need of a Healer. Constantly letting go of the obsession to be in control; and to depend on Christ. This opens up in us the need to be healed. My job is to be radically in love with Jesus. To be holy is to be totally human. Wholly human: mind, body and soul. Living for others, and to realize others need a Healer also.”

In this upcoming Year of Mercy I hope and pray for a healing of all the abortion workers. May they one day leave that tragic business.

Note: Comments in brackets [ ] are my own.